Rebecca Wagner is a football owner with more than wins on her mind

The female owner of the Pennsylvania Dragons minor league team in Hokendauqua has a special reason to be involved.

October 17, 2013|Keith Groller

Like any sports team owner, Rebecca Wagner wants to win.

"Would I love a championship? You'd better believe it," Wagner said. "I'm as competitive as the next person."

But Wagner, the owner of the Pennsylvania Dragons, the minor league adult football team that plays its American Football Association games at Bob Warke Field in Hokendauqua, has other objectives in mind.

"I want this to be about families because I am a very family-oriented person, and want to do something good in the community," Wagner said. "I want this to be a positive experience for everyone involved."

She also wants to use her team to get the word out about dyslexia.

Wagner has an 11-year-old son, Thomas John, a fifth-grader at The Hillside School in Macungie, who has double dyslexia. Despite his condition, he has played football since he was four. He loves the game and loves being around the Dragons, as does his younger sister Victoria, age 8.

"My children have offered me my biggest support," Wagner said. "If they told me tomorrow 'Hey mom, get out of it.' I might consider it, but they love it. They love being a part of this team and with the guys. And the guys have taken them in as two of their own."

Wagner knows all about camaraderie, teamwork and helping others.

Her father, Thomas Wehr, was a longtime football coach, teacher and athletic trainer in both Texas and at Blue Mountain High School in Schuylkill County.

Wagner, a Blue Mountain alum, became an athletic trainer herself and worked for Orthopaedic Associates of Allentown (OAA). She was the trainer at Blue Mountain and Southern Lehigh and then, after leaving OAA for STAR Physical Therapy, she worked at Cardinal Brennan, Mount Carmel and most recently at Tamaqua.

She also had a five-year stint as an athletic trainer for the Aransas Pass Independent School District in Texas.

"I was the first female athletic trainer in South Texas," she said.

She came home, but the time demands of being a high school athletic trainer and having two young children led her down a different career path. She is now the member services director for the Schuylkill Chamber of Commerce based in Pottsville.

She is still involved in sports through her ownership of the Dragons.

She worked for a couple years as the athletic trainer for the Schuylkill County Coalcrackers, a minor league football team. That's where she met Chris Drayton, the Coalcrackers coach.

"After last season, I said 'Geez, as well as we worked together behind the scenes, we might as well own a team.' That's kind of where the seed was planted for me being the owner of this new team," Wagner said. "I've seen a lot of things, good and bad. I saw this as an opportunity to run a program the way I feel it should be run. There are so many teams that come and go quickly. I didn't want to do that. I wanted something that would last."

She also saw it as something positive for her son, and a platform to fight dyslexia.

"Dyslexia is the No. 1 learning disability in the world and one in 10 people have it," she said. "My son just happens to have the worst form of it. This was kind of my way to give back to him. The Hillside School has been great to him and anybody from Hillside who wants to come to our games gets in for free."

The team also rallied around the family of Rashonn Drayton, the former Central Catholic and Susquehanna University standout, who recently lost his home in a fire. Rashonn is a Dragons player and the coach's brother.

The Dragons are 3-3 in Wagner's first season in charge.

Their final home game is Saturday night against the New Jersey Broncos (5-1). Admission is $7 at the gate, but kids under 10 are admitted free.

New Hall of Famers

Robyn Savitske-Crosby , a standout softball pitcher at Saucon Valley who went on to become an All-American at Endicott College in Beverly, Mass., was recently inducted into Endicott's Athletics Hall of Fame.

Savitske-Crosby was a two-time pitcher of the year at Endicott and a second-team NFCA All-American in 2005 when she was 23-1 with 0.72 ERA, 199 strikeouts, 14 shutouts and six saves.

She came back to Saucon Valley for one season as a head coach in 2010 and guided the Panthers to a 15-7 mark.

Also, Pete Sovia, a Lower Macungie resident and head girls basketball coach at Upper Perkiomen, was recently inducted into the Tri-County Area Chapter of the Pennsylvania Sports Hall of Fame in Pottstown.

Sovia's Upper Perk team had its first winning season in 18 years last winter, but he was saluted for his time as a player at St. Pius X where he graduated in 1974.

Sovia scored more than 1,400 points in his career and was the school's all-time leading scorer and the No. 1 scorer in the Pottstown Mercury region at the time of his graduation. He averaged 23 points per game as a senior and was a two-time all-Suburban Catholic choice and an all-state selection.